Home Build Update

Wow, Christmas and New Year flew. Yay!! Why yay? Because work stopped between 20 December 2017 untill 15 January 2018, and from a home builder's perspective that's a long time waiting for things to be done to your home. Here are some photos of the house before Christmas. 

So a lot did happen when they first put the slab down in mid-November. As you can see frames and roof were completed before their holidays.

This is what it looked like inside. Completed were most of the frames, wall lining, and air conditioning vents.

The main part of the house - the kitchen, dining and living. While we were standing here we started to feel the living spaces in our home felt ... small. We were even thinking, 'did they build the house to our size?' Cause our plans on paper makes our home look a lot bigger than it actually looks. 

This "left over land" doesn't help. Look at all that land we could have still utilised. When we were still reviewing our plans, I did suggest to Ian to make the whole house an extra 3m wider. But our architect family friend did rough calculations and he estimated it would have cost an extra 70-100K on top. At least we have a decent amount of space for a backyard. However, my husband and I are not gardeners so we wouldn't know the first thing about creating and maintaining one.

More space at the back of the house. The amount of space on the service side was a surprise too.

As we drove around the street we noticed our solar panels were installed at this point too. 

2018

The week before the builder said they would commence work again we thought we'd stop by and check up on the house. We were surprised to see windows, sliding doors and hebel walls were delivered onto the property, and electrical wiring started to be installed. 

During the tradies first week back, we got an independent building inspector to review the workmanship. We had minor concerns about the frame, and not building experts and first time builders, we decided it's best we get our own inspectors to get an objective review of the construction. There were minor things our Inspector identified, but overall he said there was nothing he would raise a major concern about with our home so far.

This week we went back to our home to see how the build was going. 

All the windows and sliding doors have been installed. I'm assuming this is the case upstairs too. There is a ladder to go up but I wasn't goint to climb up. Technically we're only allowed to be inside the home with the presence of our site supervisor. 

The ceiling insulation batts have been installed. Surprisingly everytime we visited our home there was always a lovely breeze but the batts will add coolness in rooms in summer and insulation in winter. 

Not sure if I've mentioned it before but our home is made out of hebel, not brick. Hebel is a type of concrete. If you think of commercial building, like shopping centres, they're made from hebel. I'm assuming they will still paint the hebel wall with the render colour we selected cause I don't think that's the colour we selected. 

Now that my son has started school for the year I can go past our home more frequently, sneak inside and take more photos, especially now there is more traction happening with the build.

That Sea Change

One of the big changes that I can finally share is we're moving. 

For awhile now we've been wanting to get a bigger home, but Sydney home prices in the areas we wanted to buy wasn't affordable for us, well not on a full timer and start up biz owner salaries. Even after discussing various scenarios with our financial planner, Sydney home prices was always the impacting factor. There were times I thought about going back to the corporate world just so I can have a consistent salary. But when I thought about giving up my business, or not being there for the boys, I would start to get emotional. I couldn't do it. 

Even if I did go back to work full time, I didn't want a massive mortgage hanging over our heads, in addition to the cost of raising a young family. Like I said prices of homes in the areas we did want to buy in had sky rocketed in the past two to three years. 

Friends would know, and maybe I may have even mentioned it on here, but we've been talking about a sea change for a long time. Even before we had children, Ian and I wanted to try living overseas but never did it because there was always an excuse we told ourselves which held us back. Well, no more!

For a good part of the first half of this year we were investigating areas to relocate to. We thought about schools, infrstructure, jobs and the kind of lifestyle we wanted and took those into consideration. We did day trips flying out to areas that we short listed to see if it was a place we could see ourselves raising a family. After a few months of research, thousands of kilometres of traveling, we found a new place we'll be calling home. 

Unfortunately it's just dirt right now and obviously will need to build a home on top of it, but I'm excited about the whole process. I'm excited to move, I'm excited to build, and I'm excited to start our life in a new place. I'm sure there will be challenges along the way, everyone who has built a home has a story, but I say 'bring it!' I love being challenged! 

A few people have questioned why move where there is no support in the form of family, no impeding job to move on to, or just questioning why move to this area altogether? All those fears are on our minds too, but if we dwell on them for too long it'll hold us back from trying. Ultimately we believe this is what's best for our family. It is a sea change for a reason. We don't want to be doing Sydney life somewhere else, we want a different life to what we have here. Not that it isn't amazing already, our priorities have changed and we're hoping to achieve an even better life by doing this move. 

So watch this space. I'll be sharing the journey with you all. The purchasing rules alone is slightly different in another state than Sydney. I'll save that for another post.